From National Indigenous Times
An Indigenous-owned business tackling long-standing waste management challenges in the Torres Strait has expanded its operations after securing capital for its community-focused Thursday Island services.
JK’s Bulk Bag and Trailer Hire Service, founded by Torres Strait entrepreneurs Karen and John Keane, spent almost three years helping local residents manage green waste in a region where disposal options were limited and transport access difficult.
Recent funding from Indigenous-led venture engine Esparq enabled the duo to purchase a second trailer to help grow its services on Thursday Island, with residents in need of affordable and practical ways to dispose of green waste and household rubbish.
Waste management presented unique challenges for Torres Strait Island communities, with locals unable to burn green waste, instead having to transport large volumes of garden waste to disposal facilities.
Karen Keane said the business emerged from the founders’ own experience trying to navigate those exact challenges.
“We were in a situation where we needed to clean our yard and had bulk bags full of green waste, but no ute or trailer to get it to the waste facility,” she said.
“Trying to source one was challenging, so the idea of the bulk bag hire was born.”
The process reflected wider community needs for practical options and, since launching their business, the Keanes have helped residents across Thursday Island, particularly Elders and people living with disability, transport their waste.
Recent expansion coincided with the business rebranding as JK’s Bulk Bag and Trailer Hire Service, after trailer hire service was added to existing waste collection operations.
The Keanes are now exploring future service opportunities, including dinghy trailer hire, gutter cleaning and brush-cutter hire, to support residents across the islands.
Ms Keane said funding support from Esparq was more about money, with access to culturally aligned business support helping her family overcome challenges that previously felt out of reach.
“Applying for loans and financial support from other organisations had become an overwhelming process,” she said.
“But we met the Esparq team and had a quick yarn, and I felt comfortable and connected to them.
“They helped us rework our business plan … and having someone we could talk to and focused on our success was gold.”
Esparq head of community Bek Lasky said JK’s was evidence Indigenous entrepreneurship could prosper when local people were supported to solve local issues.
“Karen and John’s business is addressing a real and immediate community need while making a positive environmental contribution,” Ms Lasky said.
Beyond practical benefits of the service, the business was also helping protect fragile ecosystems of the Torres Strait, with uncollected green waste a breeding ground for mosquitoes and increasing the risk of mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue fever.
Disposing of green waste is a problem? If it was plastics and stuff like that, sure, a disposal method would be a good thing, and be paid for by the producers of this crap).
But green waste? By sending plant material off your property you are giving away your soil nutrients. Never to return.
So the education here, (and also a great business BTW), would be to show people how to compost, hire out chippers, get people to understand the plant biological cycle.
Compost, compost, COMPOST!
You dont get much when ‘purchasing’ land, no mineral rights under your feet, or control of the air above, but one thing they dont tax at present is the fertility of the land.
Fancy islands scared of fake climate change thinking burning their waste and discarded greenery is a problem for the earth, when forest fires are as normal as having oceans.
In the interest of good health, keeping waste managed by burning is very practical and returns the waste to ash/elements that can feed the ground, as the Incas of South America did in making their terraced gardens that were so fertile they could live off their produce.
Fake government make fake laws that destroy life and limb.